"Zoroaster". I
had heard the name before somewhere. Didn’t mean anything to me of course, but
I was pretty sure that he was an ancient Persian, or something similar
(actually, my grandfather often told me about him when I was young, but I never
really listened). How I came to know about his message, his writings and legacy,
is a convoluted story. Oddly enough it started in Rome, a couple of thousand
years ago.

I have been a student of
antiquity for about as long as I can remember, some of my investigations
performed under the guidance of the university system. In recent years my
interests have drifted firmly into the so-called ‘classical’ world,
especially Rome. Always having had an interest in religions I naturally found
Roman religions of most particular interest, though of course Rome as a military
power is no less an absorbing subject. And many of you will realize already
where this is heading. The premier religion with strong connections to the
military was of course Mithraism. So I studied Mithraism in great depth for
several years, puzzled over the many unknowns and the mysterious
‘tauroctony’ (the ubiquitous bull-killing scene) and traced the development
of the faith as it accompanied Rome’s military expansion.

There are a number of
obvious Persian features to Mithraism, but not having a particular interest in
ancient Persia I did not pursue this line of investigation, satisfying myself
with the notion that the Persian elements represented the earliest form of the
religion, but were largely unimportant to an understanding of the Roman
experience of Mithraism. It seemed that the cult of Mithras had percolated in
ancient Commagene, along with a number of Near and Middle Eastern schools of
thought and mystery religions, and that the Romans had borrowed it, in their
almost voracious capacity to assimilate new religious practices into their
culture. They had Romanised it very thoroughly of course, so the Persian
elements were extremely peripheral, I thought. I was of course quite wrong,
although many Mithraic scholars today would probably not agree with me – just
how Persian were the ‘Persian mysteries’ of Mithras is very much an open
debate.

One day the name
‘Zoroaster’ popped up, for the umpteenth time, as I read with undying
appetite everything I could find on the Romans and Mithraism. I knew I had heard
the name before, of course, but it was a kind of ‘critical mass’ situation
– I suddenly had an urgent need to know who this person was, and why he had
been slowly creeping into my consciousness. The internet is a wonderful tool,
and it was in cyberspace that I first met Zarathushtra. I told you it was a
convoluted story.

It is important to me to
say, before going on, that I was not in search of some religious or spiritual
path, at least not consciously. I have not drifted in and out of churches,
temples and cults. I have not belonged to any mainline nor any fringe religious
groups. Though I have dabbled in yoga meditation, Zen philosophy and even spent
a week on a weird ‘new age’ commune once, as a teenager, I have not been a
‘religious’ person by any stretch of the imagination.Spiritual perhaps, but certainly not religious. It had always
seemed to me that God, about the existence of whom I have never had the least
doubt, was approachable directly, and did not require any intermediaries. I
sought, therefore, God within myself, and within the world around me. Then I
bumped into Zarathushtra.

As I searched the ‘net’
for information I was at first quite intrigued by the historical aspects of the
Zoroaster story, how he is believed to have lived as early as the second
millennium BC. It was especially intriguing to find that his own words have
apparently been preserved until the present, certainly a unique scenario among
all the known prophets of any major religion. It was no less exciting to think
that his words have survived until today by the word-of-mouth transmission, via
oral-tradition memory, of large tracts of material in an unintelligible
‘sacred’ language – a time capsule awaiting modern scholarly decipherment,
and preserving a message of enormous consequence to everyone.

I very soon ended up with a
growing library of books about the religion founded by this somewhat enigmatic
Zarathushtra. It took me a while before I realized that the Gatha component of
the texts I now had access to were the essential core of the whole religion.
Before long I had accumulated quite a number of translations, some exceptional
and some quite horrible and un-academic. As I sorted through the available
material, and sought out more, I very slowly found myself drawn to this ancient
teacher, from a land I knew almost nothing about.

I would guess that it is
over two years since I realized that I had been ‘converted’ to
Zarathustrianism. It had happened almost when I wasn’t looking. I know,
however, that Ahura Mazda has always been looking, and I had simply, finally,
found a clear vision of Him. If I may paraphrase an Islamic saying, it was now
clear to me that ‘there is only one God, Ahura Mazda, and Zarathushtra is his
prophet’. Having been so against structured religion all my adult life I was
now too embarrassed to tell any of my family and friends what was happening to
me. Two years later and I am still ‘coming out’, by degrees.

The features of
Zarathushtra’s vision of God that compelled me to consciously choose The Good
Religion are several, but all are simple and clear. The first being that very
simplicity itself. Zarathushtra speaks, in his Gathas, of God in a way that is
both logical and at once spiritually satisfying. God as an indescribable,
unknowable, all-pervading, all-good force is a view of God that fits comfortably
in my world-view. The Christian attempts to humanize the image of God had never
struck a cord with me – how could I possibly believe in a personal God, one
with characteristics so much like humanity, in whose image He, it seemed to me,
had been ‘made’. Surely, I thought, God could not be just a bigger version
of myself. Zarathushtra said the same thing, in his own way and words, and I
realized that his words might have real value to me. Then I discovered the
second critical aspect of the Zarathustrian message – the absolute
incompatibility between Good and Bad.

Certainly, Christians in
the society within which I have lived most of my life have had a somewhat
similar view, but they never quite gave it the simple and plainly true aspect
that Zarathushtra did. For the first time I knew that doing ‘bad’ was
counter to God’s plan for the universe, and that a sin was not a sin because
it was called a sin but rather because it was incompatible with the vision of
reality that God had, a vision which I wanted to add too and not detract from.
It might seem to Christians that I am talking about the same thing as they tried
to tell me often, but I think the nuance is different. In Gathic
Zarathustrianism I found no absolute concept of ‘sin’, rather a way to
understand what a sin is. Instead of lists of dos and don’ts I found a simple
method for understanding what was ‘good’ and what was ‘bad’.Intellectually, I have always thought that the best way to help anyone is
not to give them food but to give them the means to grow it themselves.
Zarathushtra does this in his Gathas – he gives the tools for understanding
how to live properly, for knowing what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. The
premier ‘tool’, of course, is Vohuman.

The Christians talk about
‘conscience’. In many respects I found the concept of Vohuman to be very
similar. But not the same. For the first time I read that in fact it is
spiritually advantageous to use one’s god-given brains in understanding the
difficulties inherent in a spiritual life. The Christian idea of ‘faith’,
which just never really worked for me, was very readily supplanted by Vohuman (I
could never understand why I had been given intelligence and a capacity for
reason by God if I should then ignore these gifts and have blind faith instead).
And on top of this crystal clear explanation of method Zarathushtra also gave a
simple and clear idea of the purpose – Asha. By explaining that there is a
clearly defined plan of creation, an absolute baseline to reality, Zarathushtra
made it easy to see the purpose in trying to live a good life. ‘Good’
suddenly, for me, had clear definition.

Zarathushtra, with his
words, filled me with a great sense of having a real choice in the progress of
not only my own life but of the development of God’s unfolding and perfect
plan. I determined that I would try my best to follow the example set by
Zarathushtra – I too would vote for a progressive and wholly good universe.

The phrase that resounds in
my head still, even after quite a long time has passed since I first began to
digest the concept, is Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. I feel sure that
many ‘born’ Zardushti give this little real consideration, it being
something they have always heard. Equally, most non-Zardushti reading about the
triple injunctions of Zarathushtra probably give it about as much thought as
they do about the ten commandments of the Hebrew bible – a nice piece of pious
philosophy, but hardly earth- shattering revelation. I am sure, however, that
never has a simpler, more concise and more impossible guide ever been given by
any prophet in any religion. Suddenly ten or any number of commandments could be
easily dropped in preference to three. Every choice that we can ever be asked to
make will rely on these three ‘rules’ for a positive outcome. Every single
choice. How simple, how clear!But
oh, how impossible. What a thing to ask – unfaltering perfection in even our
every thought!? The excitement I have felt ever since I realized what
Zarathushtra was asking has not dimmed by even a fraction. In this small
sentence, with its three innocent looking demands, is the entire ‘secret’ to
living a good life, fulfilling one’s role in God’s plan and finding purpose
in existence.

I have recently finally
come into contact with a number of Zardushti and am very pleased to see that the
light is shining brightly in their hearts and minds – I do not know if they
are a unique group of people, or if they represent the wider Zarathushtrian
community. I hope the latter. I have always been impressed with the concept of
Fire as a symbol of Ahura Mazda, and I see in my new friends and co-religionists
the way that that fire can burn inside mankind. I have no doubt that there are
many, many good and dedicated people in the world, within whom the same fire
burns, but who are not Zardushti. There is no contradiction here for me, for
Zarathushtra never left any impression that only he knew the way to God and that
only his way was correct. Clearly God is within everything and everyone, and
there are many ways to realization – perhaps as many as there are people. In
‘converting’ to Mazdayasna I have simply done what Zarathushtra said – I
have made a choice, an informed and deeply felt choice. I was struck by his
suggestion that the choice of religion is the single most important decision
anyone can make. But in the end I have to say that, in fact, I think the
religion chose me, and I just didn’t struggle an awful lot to get away.

When I have been asked how
it is that I now consider myself to be a Zardushti I have a great deal of
difficulty in answering. I feel that I am where I need to be, and that all the
events that lead me here were not in any way coincidental or accidental. When I
looked with an open mind Asha looked back.